With just a handful of recipes to go before the French Fridays with Dorie crew finishes cooking all the recipes in Around My French Table, some of the recipes left are where they are in the lineup due to deliberate procrastination. A case in point would be this week’s choice: Cabbage and Foie Gras Bundles.

As it turns out, this elegant starter might be even simpler to put together than its name describes. Foie gras is wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves and steamed to warm the liver.

I’ll admit that I felt great ambivalence on this one. I wasn’t inclined to make a major investment in ingredients, so I didn’t put much effort into searching for the foie gras terrine. When we made the coddled eggs that called for foie gras mousse, I had great luck with the chicken liver mousse from Trader Joe’s, so I just bought that again. Of course, I didn’t read the recipe header where Dorie said to use a terrine made with whole foie gras not chopped or mousse. Oops.

My misadventure continues. The first step is to boil the leaves to soften them enough to be able to wrap up the foie gras into bundles. I couldn’t find Savoy cabbage, though I’m sure the softer, more tender leaves of Savoy would have been easier to separate from the head. Leaves on the regular green cabbage I bought are stiff. As I removed each leaf off my head of cabbage, it tore.

So, I have torn cabbage leaves and the wrong kind of foie gras terrine. Next step, I wrapped thick slices of liver mousse in the softened cabbage leaves. Fortunately, those cabbage leaves are more forgiving than I thought and I had bundles, ready to steam.

Nothing really needs further cooking. The steaming step is intended to warm the filling. The mousse being more delicate than what was really called for, I only steamed the bundles for 2 minutes. Now, transfer to the plate, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Voila!

Howard’s been trying to get me to make his grandmother’s stuffed cabbage for years. These bundles are Not Your Grandmother’s Stuffed Cabbage, but they are tasty. Howard really liked them. I don’t know that I’d make this again, but it was worth trying.

If you want to see what my French Friday friends thought of their bundles, check their links here.

After our starter, we enjoyed leftover Chicken Parmentier from the latest Everyday Dorie column in the Washington Post. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should!